Watercolour Cards

Friday, August 31, 2012

Hi there,Today is Malaysia's 55th Independence Day!. Or we called it Merdeka Day. Everyone is in joyous mood celebrating all the peace and prosperity that we had been enjoying since 1957. My cats weren't amused with last night's loud fireworks from nearby stadium, LOL. I don't like being in crowded place much, so I chose to stay at home and watched everything on the telly :).

Remember about the denim & patina inspirations that I posted here recently?. Lucky I was able to squeeze them in one journal spread!. I promised myself that if I was going to really spent a lot of time pinning away these lovelies, I MUST at least create journal pages out of these photos. So, armed with denim & corrugated chipboard, I set to work. Here's the result;

Patina & denim pages!.Corrugated chipboard makes the best wall!. I torn one layer of the corrugated paper off an old package and glued it down to the journal. Exposed that yummy wavy surface :). I primed it with gesso first, dried and gave a few spritz of green pearl glimmer mist. Sprayed some water to dilute it a bit.

Then I just play with browns, yellow, mossy green pastels as well as some antique brown Stazon and tear drop gold ink in order to get that copper patina. I still didn't like it though :(. Must learn how to do this.

Then came the most fun part. Spread the denim!. I used mostly gel medium to glued it down to the page. Stapled here and there for additional support. I added some washi tapes & masking tapes for more colors. The metal ring was a cool find at the hardware store.

I hope you'd enjoy another grungy page from me :). It really is thick. Beginning to worry that my journal would not close, with all those chunky goodness!. LOL.

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

I've been playing with simple watercolor sketches lately, and I thought I should create a journal spread in watercolor too. Some splashes of sweet colors will do for a start :). Here is what I ended up with;

A few color splashes, minimal collage and doodling. I glued down tissue paper hearts onto the gentleman and wrote 'AWE' above him. He's definitely a lost man!. LOVE how my watercolor pom poms set the overall mood for my pages. A fun party, couple's dancing and lots of LOVE :). I traced the dancing couple from '150 Silhouette Design Book' onto an old storybook page.

Added a couple of cupcake wraps for her skirt. Wrote bold letters with a maroon sharpie and scribble love quotes with a black pen.

Monday, August 27, 2012

Tell me I'm crazy but whenever I'm creating, I know that my art angels are working with me. Beside me. A little help goes along way :). I feel grateful for this. I wished it, though. Hard enough and it is given. I believe we all could ask for a little help every now and then :). For it to work, we must TRUST our heart & go with what we feel like creating. Maybe, it's their magic dust that makes it all better. LOL.

My friend Sharon Y. is brilliant with words and has good eye for beautiful quotes. This particular one struck a chord. I LOVE it and is perfect for my heavenly little friends :).

It says;

"All you need is trust, and a little pixie dust" - Peter Pan.

For these pages, I skipped layers and heavy collage. Instead, I made circles on wet gesso with my finger to create texture. I washed the embossed pattern paper on opposite page with gesso as well. Dried the pages before coloring them with red pan pastel.

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Two days ago I did another mini clean up in my craft room. It was all about envelopes and up-cycling. I kept a big box full of old envelopes (pretty ones AND the ugly ones too). I just don't have the heart to discard them, you see. Until two days ago, I threw a few that had 'no artsy potential' and used some on my new project. How about art journal pages with lots of old envelopes on them??. F.U.N.

See if you could spot those envelopes here;

Love the peek-a-boo pocket from one of them. I wrote 'POSTAGE' on a piece of paper, inserted in before adhering the envelope to the page. I squeezed 7 old envelopes in there!. Simply glued them to the page with gel medium and covered generously with gesso. While the gesso was drying, I freely imprinted the pages with a stamp (with no ink). This would give beautiful texture on the pages when smudged with thin aqua paint later :).

I finger-painted over the envelopes some aqua acrylic, applied thicker paint around the envelopes. Spritzed on the wet aqua paint with water at random so I could clearly stamp some flowers with leftover aqua paint. When dried, inked the edges with brown Stazon. That fern-like design is actually stamped imprint, washed with acrylic paint. I doodled and collaged on the envelopes as I would to my else, flat journal pages. Wrote quotes from Jane Austen's book, Pride and Prejudice with a black pigment pen. I am such a fan!.

More envelopes. And postage stamps too, of course!. I chose stamps depicted a lady (Juliette), a man (but he's too old to be Romeo), an owl (the messenger) and some green landscape. I cheekily named my pages today "Letter for Juliette, just for fun.

I've been enjoying myself on Pinterest lately, admiring so many colors and creativity. To balance that out, I made dark mysterious journal pages about a girl who wanders in the dark :). I guess she is checking out the curious twine weeds!

I cut some twines, arranged and glued them to the pages like weeds. I hand-stitched the other one with black thread. Now it gets weirder. On opposite page, I made thicker weeds using some pumice gel (colored with red acrylic paint) by simply applied the gel over a chevron stencil to mimic the other weeds. Let dry for sometime.

Then dropped some black india ink over the page at random while generously sprayed with water (to spread the ink). Let the weeds be diluted in black ink as well. Also added some red acrylic ink into the mixture. Last I stamped a girl and doodled around her some assuring words with white gel pen. And some around the weeds. The quote seemed perfect for the mysterious pages, I think.

Basically, I just used a 2 color-combo for these pages. Black & red. Could be easily mistaken for a 'vampire' theme page!. Though too early for Halloween. I hope you'd be playing with twines too.

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Sweet friends,Color changes mood like magic :). In the next few days, I'll be sharing much loved, color-inspired photos which I found on the web. I just wished that I could take great photos like that. If you like, you may follow the links and send the author some love :). While you are here, do enjoy some purpleness!.

It's been too long since I last picked up my brush & paint watercolor. I missed it. So I watched Miss Potter again (Renee Zellweger as Beatrix Potter) and before the movie ended, I'd already painting!. Such beautiful movie :).

Here is what I made;

I used Daler-Rowney Georgian pan watercolor set simply because every color has an 'old' earthy tone too it. Which is great to paint Beatrix Potter animal characters from her books :). I started by giving the page a cobalt blue wash. When dried, I wrote big bold letters with black pigment pen and then colored in yellow and light green.

These pages are quite free of texture, with only a few popped up animal friends here and there. They add playfulness to the pages.

'Ahimsa' is a Sanskrit term meaning 'to do no harm' or 'the avoidance of violence'. The fairy, mouse and flowers were fussy cut from Graphic 45 pattern paper. And the beautiful quote is from David Orr.

I believe this. We are all ONE with the Earth and all creations. If we hurt the environment, we are hurting ourselves. Lets do the littlest part in caring for our living planet. It's the only one we have around :). Hugs.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

As for me, it is only natural to use crushed volcanic rocks (pumice) on my journal pages. I'm a geologist after all :).

Recently, I played with Golden Pumice Gel over stencil and pan pastels. I wasn't too sure when smearing the gritty texture on my page however, after it dried I kind of liked it.

I didn't add any colors to the pumice gel as the pan pastel background was already too colorful. I love how the red diamond stencil graded into coarse pumice :). My page has become a nice scrubber!. LOL. Thick pumice gel is surprisingly quick to dry :).

I also stamped and added pieces of rice paper and fabric to the page. Drew circles with black india ink and some doodling to finish the pages off. The circles resemble the sun, and the pen nibs are tall buildings silhouette at sunset :). I just made that up, of course.

I'm liking pan pastel a lot, so easy to apply & mix colors on the page. Dry or with wet sponge. Best thing, you won't get your fingers too dirty. I hope you get the chance to play with them!. Happy Wednesday.

Monday, August 20, 2012

I like to share another old pages I did several days ago. I was merely playing with stencils and cool Tim Holtz stamps. Sharon Yong of Scrappingville owns many great artsy stamps and I often play with them after preparing class kits at the store :). When I first saw these stamps, I immediately knew I had to create earthy steampunk pages!. The glasses and the funky numbers stamps remind me of 'Sherlock Holmes' movie :).

On the left, I adhered embossed card stock as background before applied gesso on. Then I finger-painted all over the pages with brown, copper and blue acrylic paint. Did you notice I mistakenly stamped 'Not all who wondered are lost' upside down?. [*wink wink; see the little inclusion].

I love doodling using correction pen. The lollipop 'fireworks' add depth to my rather blend page, I think. They also resemble ideas which constantly popping in my mind. You still could see (and feel) the floral patterns from the embossed card stock, even after the pages were heavily primed with gesso and painted on with acrylic paint.

Miscellaneous bits and pieces like torn page from storybook, a canvas tag and tulle scrap give dimensions to the page.